IGN: Kameo: Elements of Power was in development about three years, and it's finally out. What's your honest opinion about the final box copy of Kameo? Has it held up over time? What was executed well and what could have been, you know slightly improved?

George Andreas Overall, we're all extremely proud of the final build of Kameo. It plays very well, looks and sounds great and offers 360 owners a little something different. We wanted to make a game that was easy to play, had a variety of play mechanics and plenty of depth too and we think we've done that.

But Kameo certainly isn't perfect - nothing is. To get the very best out of the game, you really need to look way beneath the surface, especially with the combat mechanics. We were very conscious of the fact that there would be some people that would just want to breeze through the game as quickly as possible and sadly not really discover the real beauty of Kameo. But that's probably more our fault than that of the user. It's fine having great hidden depth, but in retrospect, it seems that maybe we shouldn't have expected everyone to want to dig deep to find it.

Also, we really wanted to do more with the adventure part of the game. Break up the Shadow Troll hunts a little more and give the player other quests before getting to the next shadow troll action scene. But, as always, time is something we always seem to run out of. Having said all of that, we still feel we made a great broad reach action adventure title for the 360.

Rare originally planned for 100 elements in Kameo.

IGN: In Kameo, there are 10 elemental characters. Were there any elements that didn't make it into the final cut? Or were there ideas for some that you didn't use?

George Andreas: We originally started with over 100 warriors! We soon decided to have a smaller overall number (which we scaled down to 18) but make more use of them. We eventually settled on 12. Then, toward the middle of Xbox development, we cut an entire element (the wind element) and reduced the overall number to 10. We did use some of the moves from the wind characters though. Thing's like Thermite's Backblast move was originally used by another character and Flex's shock move was also borrowed from another of the characters that didn't make the final cut to name just a couple.

IGN: Deep Blue is one of my favorite looking characters, but for an element that originates from water, he's one of the most frustrating characters to control underwater, especially in shallow areas. Was there much discussion about this internally? Also, why is this character actually easier to use on land?

George Andreas: Poor old Deep Blue. He's taken some flack over the last few months. Yes, he went through many iterations of water control schemes but and we eventually discovered that what worked well for one group of people, didn't work well for another group. No matter how hard we tried, and how many times we tackled the issue, we could never unify people's opinions.

So eventually, we opted for what we thought worked best given his objectives. It actually becomes second nature once you get used to it. It's just that if you're used to moving the camera around while playing, then he's going to feel very awkward. Just let the camera do its thing, press one button to propel your-self and you'll soon get the hang of it.

The shallow areas you mention became an issue because he moved so fast. We slowed his movement down to accommodate smaller areas in the Water Temple areas, but we 'over looked' the other areas. Another area that proved a pain for some players was the Water Boss area - Corallis. Again, we simply didn't slow his movement down enough in this small space.

IGN: Sorry to all those people who haven't played Kameo yet, this is a little bit of a spoiler. But the ending of Kameo clearly leaves the game open to a sequel. What are the chances of gamers seeing a sequel? And would kinds of hurdles, sales or otherwise, does a game like this have to make to earn the right to make a sequel?

George Andreas: We would like to look at doing a sequel. But really, it comes down to whether or not this is financially viable and if the development team really wants to do it. Currently, Kameo's doing well.

Personally, I'd love to address some of the issues mentioned above and really make it the best game of its type on any system. We have the history and knowledge of this experience now and are very confident we could make it an even better gaming experience the second time around. Kameo's a great starting point for a franchise and a very solid foundation to build on. So, people, if you want another Kameo game, go out and buy this game first...